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Trump's response to a deadly neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia,
was one of the most controversial moments in his presidency.
It was emblematic of Trump's struggle to bring the country together after tragedies, and more generally. His response also typified his
controversial record on race relations and white supremacy.
Trump blamed "many sides" for the violence at the rally, which resulted in
the death of a counterprotester, Heather Heyer. He later said there were
"very fine people on both sides."
The former president was excoriated by Republicans and Democrats alike
over his response and his failure to offer a swift and forceful
condemnation of white-supremacist violence.
GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, often one of Trump's fiercest defenders in Congress, at the time said the former president's words were "dividing Americans, not healing them."
"President Trump took a step backward by again suggesting there is moral equivalency between the white supremacist, neo-Nazis and KKK members,"
Graham added.
In the wake of the brutal death of George Floyd at the hands of
Minneapolis police and the nationwide protests that followed, Trump also
failed to rise to the occasion. He's done far more to divide the country
than bring it together.
The former president had peaceful protesters tear-gassed near the White
House so he could pose for a photo with a Bible at a nearby church. He's consistently demonized anti-racism demonstrators, and controversially sent federal agents into US cities to squash unrest and intimidate the local population. Trump has elevated conspiracy theorists and people who've threatened protesters with guns.
Historians have warned that Trump's tactics mirror those of authoritarian regimes.
Trump has frequently employed racist rhetoric during his presidency, but especially during times of heightened racial tensions.
Polling has shown that the vast majority of Black Americans view Trump as racist, and his approval rating with this demographic stood at 14% in late 2020, according to Gallup.
Failure: America's global image is in shambles
Trump NATO SS
Reuters
America's global image declined significantly under Trump, who repeatedly insulted key US allies while cozying up to dictators.
The former president's tendency to push important allies away and isolate
the US, including by pulling out of landmark international agreements like
the Paris climate accord, had a palpable impact.
People across the world expressed negative views on Trump. Pew Research
Center in January 2020 released a survey of 32 countries that showed a
median of 64% said they do not have confidence in Trump to do the right
thing in world affairs, and just 29% expressed confidence in the
president.
Trump's handling of the coronavirus pandemic also left the US embarrassed
on the world stage, and created a void in global leadership that China has rushed to fill.
Failure: Family separations and the deaths of migrant children
Homestead Florida
John Haltiwanger/INSIDER
Trump in 2016 campaigned on reducing undocumented immigration, pledging to
take a hardline approach.
He made good on that promise when coming into office, but was accused of human-rights abuses and violating international law by the UN.
The Trump administration's "zero tolerance" policy on illegal border
crossings led to the separations of at least 5,500 families and saw
children placed in cages.
The president of the American Academy of Pediatrics at the time described
the practice as "nothing less than government-sanctioned child abuse."
After widespread backlash, Trump issued an executive order in June 2018 to
halt the family separations, and a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to reunite all those it had separated. But the fallout from
the separations is ongoing.
Trump falsely blamed his predecessor, former President Barack Obama, for
the policy that saw thousands of children separated from their parents.
At least six migrant children died in US custody, leading to widespread condemnation of conditions in detention facilities.
The UN human-rights chief, Michelle Bachelet, in July 2019 said she was "shocked" by the US government's treatment of migrant children and the conditions they faced in detention facilities after crossing the border
from Mexico.
"As a pediatrician, but also as a mother and a former head of state, I am deeply shocked that children are forced to sleep on the floor in
overcrowded facilities, without access to adequate healthcare or food, and
with poor sanitation conditions," Bachelet, the former president of Chile, stated.
Failure: Iran, Syria, and Afghanistan
trump rouhani iran 4x3 trump
Michael Gruber/Getty Images; Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty Images; Samantha Lee/Business Insider
Trump's decision to unilaterally withdraw the US from the 2015 nuclear
deal in May 2018 has induced chaos throughout the Middle East.
It remains one of Trump's most unpopular decisions in the global arena,
and has been condemned by top US allies who were also signatories to the
deal.
The former president failed to thwart Iran's aggressive behavior in the
region through a maximum pressure campaign, meant to squeeze Tehran into negotiating a more stringent version of the pact.
After a series of incidents in the Persian Gulf region in 2019, tensions between Washington and Tehran reached historic heights and sparked fears
of war. These fears were exacerbated after Trump ordered a strike that
killed Iran's top general, Qassem Soleimani, in early January 2020. The
strike led Iran to retaliate and fire on US troops in the region, and
dozens were seriously injured.
Iran also abandoned the 2015 nuclear deal, which was designed to prevent
it from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
Trump's decision to pull US troops out of northern Syria in October 2019
was also among his most disastrous foreign policy moves. In doing so,
Trump effectively abandoned US-allied Kurdish forces who bore the brunt of
the US-led campaign against ISIS to a Turkish military invasion.
The withdrawal induced a humanitarian crisis and created a security vacuum
that Russia, Iran, and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, an accused war criminal, all benefited from.
Trump repeatedly pledged to end "endless wars," zeroing in on Afghanistan.
He wanted to remove all US troops from Afghanistan by the November
election, but that didn't happen.
Meanwhile, The New York Times in June 2020 reported that US intelligence officials determined Russia paid bounties to Taliban-linked Afghan
militants to kill US troops.
The Trump administration didn't take any known responses. Though the White House claimed Trump was not initially briefed on the matter, reporting
from multiple outlets suggests otherwise. Trump in a July 2020 interview
said he had not confronted Russian President Vladimir Putin on the matter. Failure: Replacing the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare)
John McCain
Screenshot/CNN
The late GOP Sen. John McCain's iconic "thumbs-down" vote denied Trump a
full congressional repeal (even a "skinny repeal") of former President
Barack Obama's signature healthcare law.
But Trump did have success in dismantling parts of the law. His tax bill included a rollback of the tax penalty for those who did not enroll in healthcare.
Trump never offered a replacement for the Affordable Care Act. As a
candidate Trump promised "insurance for everybody" and a more immediate replacement to the nearly decade-old ACA. But he didn't deliver on that as president.
Failure: Impeachment
In this Dec. 18, 2019, photo, President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign
rally in Battle Creek, Mich. Using stark “Us versus Them” language, Trump
and his campaign are trying to frame impeachment not as judgment on his
conduct but as a culture war referendum on him and his supporters, aiming
to motivate his base heading into an election year (AP Photo/Paul Sancya) Associated Press
Trump was impeached in the House of Representatives on December 18, 2019.
The House approved two articles of impeachment against Trump, one for
abuse of power over his dealings with Ukraine and one for obstruction of Congress over his efforts to stonewall the impeachment inquiry.
Trump urged Ukraine to launch investigations into his political rivals as
he simultaneously withheld about $400 million in congressionally approved military aid from the country, which is fighting an ongoing war against pro-Russian separatists.
The former president was acquitted in a Senate trial, but will still go
down as just the third president in US history to be impeached. GOP Sen.
Mitt Romney of Utah also made history by voting to convict Trump, marking
the first time ever that a senator voted to convict a president from their
own party.
On January 6, 2021, Trump provoked an attempted coup at the US Capitol in relation to his baseless claims of mass voter fraud and refusal to concede
to Biden. Five people were killed.
Trump was impeached by the House for inciting a violent insurrection over
the Capitol riot. He's the only president in US history to be impeached
twice.
Failure: COVID-19 pandemic
Trump, Dr. Fauci, Birx briefing masks mask
Jabin Botsford/Getty Images
Trump's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic will likely go down as one of
the biggest disasters in US history. Hundreds of thousands of Americans
have died, and millions are unemployed.
On the day Trump left office, there had been more than 24.3 million
confirmed COVID-19 cases in the US and over 405,000 reported fatalities.
The US has the worst coronavirus outbreak in the world. As of January 20,
the US COVID-19 death toll was on the verge of surpassing the total number
of American service members killed during World War II.
Despite this, Trump repeatedly downplayed the threat of the virus and contradicted top public-health experts, flouting recommendations from
advisors on his own White House coronavirus task force.
In March 2020, Trump privately admitted to veteran reporter Bob Woodward
(on tape) that he was deliberately misleading the public on the dangers of
the virus in an effort to avoid inducing panic.
Public health experts have cited Trump's nonchalant approach to the virus
and tendency to reject science as one of the primary factors in why the US emerged as the epicenter.
Trump refused to accept responsibility for his failed response to the
pandemic, blaming China instead.
Failure: The US economy
Trump
Tom Brenner/Reuters
Trump often took credit for the robust US economy before the pandemic,
ignoring that much of the growth began during the Obama administration.
The US faced one of the worst economic crises in its history under Trump,
which was intrinsically linked to his disastrous response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Coronavirus lockdowns in early 2020 and reduced consumer spending led to
tens of millions of job losses as whole segments of the economy sputtered.
The economy has since begun adding back jobs, but is far from a full
recovery as the US struggles to contain the coronavirus and Biden takes
over.
Roughly 22 million jobs were lost from February to April. Though nearly
half of those jobs have been recovered, the unemployment rate is still at
7.9% (estimated to be about 12 million people). The pre-pandemic
unemployment rate was 3.4%.
As Trump left office, the US national debt was at the highest levels since World War II. And US economic growth was set to average just above 0% for Trump's first term because of the pandemic recession, according to The Washington Post.
Though the economy is still far from recovered, Trump also failed to bring Congress together to pass a second coronavirus stimulus package prior to Election Day as Americans across the country struggled to cover rent and
other bills. The GOP-controlled Senate instead prioritized confirming
Trump's Supreme Court nominee, essentially placing the economy and the livelihoods of Americans on the back-burner.
As of Election Day 2020, Trump had not signed a coronavirus relief bill in roughly half a year. He finally signed a $900 billion relief package
shortly after Christmas in late 2020.
Failure: Contracting COVID-19
trump walter reed
ALEX EDELMAN/AFP via Getty Images
As the president of the US, Trump is the most heavily protected person on
the planet. The fact he contracted COVID-19 in October 2020 stood as a catastrophic failure and a national-security crisis for the US.
The president routinely flouted public health recommendations before
getting infected. Less than a week before he was diagnosed, Trump mocked then-presidential candidate Joe Biden for routinely wearing a mask in
public.
Top public health experts have repeatedly urged Americans to wear a mask
or face covering, touting the practice as the best tool available in
fighting the virus.
Trump was diagnosed with COVID-19 just days after essentially holding a super-spreader event in the Rose Garden at the White House to announce his Supreme Court nominee. Attendees did not socially distance, and many were
seen without masks.
Well over a dozen people in Trump's orbit tested positive for COVID-19
after the event.
Failure: Damaging democracy
trump wind
President Donald Trump. Getty
Trump eroded democratic norms in many ways during his tenure.
He repeatedly attacked the media, leading UN experts to warn that Trump's rhetoric raised the risk of violence against journalists. He threatened to deploy combat troops to American cities, over the objections of their
elected leaders, and ordered illegal actions like demanding poll workers
stop counting ballots.
Trump's relentless dissemination of disinformation on an array of topics, particularly the electoral process, led historians and experts on fascism
to compare him to dictators like Benito Mussolini.
Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem), a project that monitors the health of
democracy across the world, in its 2020 report said the US has become more autocratic in the Trump era.
"The United States – former vanguard of liberal democracy – has lost its
way," V-Dem's 2020 report said, adding that the US "is the only country in Western Europe and North America suffering from substantial
autocratization."
The former president's rhetoric was often viewed as a source of
encouragement by far-right extremist groups, and Trump frequently
equivocated when asked to condemn such people.
Though President Joe Biden was the clear winner of the 2020 election,
Trump refused to concede. Trump rejected the results and made baseless allegations of fraud.
Even as world leaders began to congratulate Biden, a major sign of Biden's legitimacy, Trump continued to deny reality.
After weeks of rejecting the election result and attempting to overturn
the outcome, the president provoked an attempted coup at the US Capitol on
the day lawmakers met to certify Biden's Electoral College victory. He
riled up his supporters in an inflammatory speech, urging them to march on
the Capitol and "fight like hell." They listened.
The pro-Trump mob that stormed the Capitol on January 6 destroyed property
and clashed with police. Five people were killed in the process. Trump was subsequently impeached for inciting the violent insurrection.
After the violence, Trump released a video acknowledging that a new administration would take over, but he did not explicitly concede.
Trump's refusal to concede breaks from a democratic tradition in the US
that dates back to its earliest days when President John Adams lost the
1800 election and peacefully stepped aside for Thomas Jefferson, a member
of another political party, to take over.
The former president undermined the political system in the US and sowed
doubt about the integrity of the country's elections. Every president
prior to Trump allowed for a peaceful transition of power after they'd
served two terms or lost an election.
Trump also skipped Biden's inauguration. He's the first outgoing president since 1869 to refuse to attend the inauguration of his successor.
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-biggest-accomplishments-and- failures-heading-into-2020-2019-12#failure-damaging-democracy-15
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